


A memory of shattered Light

by Zimraphel



Series: tolkien ficlets [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fëanor shall return who perished ere the Sun was made, Gen, I shall break my heart, and if I must break them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27858641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zimraphel/pseuds/Zimraphel
Summary: The Sun passes and the Moon falls, and Fëanáro unmakes the Silmarils.
Series: tolkien ficlets [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042965
Kudos: 37





	A memory of shattered Light

He takes his great hammer and lifts it above his head like the knife of sacrifice. Listens closely to the rush of the wind, for anything, anything—but no voice stays his heavy arm. No voice cries out of the stones, which just shine and shine, giving and transforming light into Light, the world as it was and would have been into the world that is.

And then the Light is everywhere.

Nothing to contain it, no dream to chase it. No tree to bloom with it, to flower with it, to fall with it.

There is a moment of silence so profound it seems impossible to draw breath. There is no memory of striking, only of being stricken. There is only white, white light, and he is blind! blind! And then--everything—everything he has ever created is in this, and is pouring out and out. A creator knows; no masterpiece is made out of just one thing, and the master of all masterpieces is made out of every one of them. Every skill sharpened on lesser work, sights, songs; a first view of cold stars above Araman during the long travels of his wild youth, the rush of a first kiss transformed into something substantial— the final glance of final parting, transformed—the gleam of sea-wet stone on the shore --transformed, the sound of a word in his mouth, memory of lightning moving wildly through leaves on summer’s day, a thousand clanging nights in smithies deep below the earth, transformed, transformed, transformed— and at last Laurelin’s light on his mother’s molten silver hair, so still, so still, and every breath, every glance, every moment, the very weight of his gaze, his glance, his, every—he thinks, for a moment he can hear his heart beat in the light, but it is something not unlike thunder and now wholly outside of his grasp, roaring out through the twilit garden and into the pale clouds above. And he longs to go with it, but it is leaving, it is leaving.

And the Light should be—should be somewhere, now. Should there not be a sparkle of it, softer, but insistent, be on everything now? Imbuing the world-that-is with the world-that-was, seeping into every crack of Arda Marred like gold, to hold it together in some strange new shape?

But the Sun has passed, and the Moon has fallen, and Lórien’s perfumed air is dark and silent like a tomb.

No sound hounds his steps as he makes his way to the bier where so long ago his mother laid down never to stand again, too weary to weep. And finally, he thinks, with maybe the last shadowed thought, the very last thing he will ever shape, looking at the fading stars now echoing with his voice—does he understand what it meant for his mother to go out into him.

His gift given, he may give no more.

-

And every year in the Mended World, where the cracks still show but golden Light and the memory of a thousand nights sinks into the breaks, the Children come to the darkened gardens, where the night is soft like violets, and fair Fëanáro lies still in dreamless sleep like the memory of a world gone by, and weep.

**Author's Note:**

> "It is said that Míriel answered Mandos, saying: ‘I came hither to escape from the body, and I do not desire ever to return to it. My life is gone out into Fëanáro, my son. 
> 
> This gift I have given to him whom I loved, and I can give no more.’"


End file.
